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Last week we had the opportunity to visit another Healthy Homes volunteer in their site for 3 days to get a better idea of what life may be like the next 2 years. We did house visits with the volunteers to see the stoves they had built and gave charlas in the health centers. We were put into small groups of 2 to 3 other trainee volunteers and were given only the name of the city and name of the volunteer we were to visit, so then it was up to us as far as how to get there and which buses to take. I really enjoy first hand learning so this definitely was a good learning experience, especially for when we are on our owns travelling to and from our sites throughout the next two years. We had to take 4 camionetas (chicken buses) from where I currently live to where Ashley, the volunteer we visited, lives. It took about 5 hours mas o menos to drive there and the buses were very full as we were all sitting 3 to a seat in an old American school bus. We had to travel through several windy roads through the mountains and drove over the highest point on the pan-american highway. It was a beautiful ride and I enjoyed the new sites of lush green trees, variety of foliage and of course hundreds of corn fields, even at the highest parts in the mountains.
After the long trek we arrived to this beautiful village in the mountains with lots of farming, trees, and very friendly people. The majority of the people were Indigenous Mayans who speak Maam dialect and the majority of this area is Evangelical, which differs from where I am currently living because the majority here is Catholic and the Indigenous language here is Cachequel. There are 22 different Mayan dialects, but these two are the more common ones and either of these or one of the others will most likely be the language dialect that I will be learning in my site, too. I think the Mayan dialect is beautiful and uses different parts of your vocal cords down in your throat to make various sounds for the words. I hear it is a challenge to learn, but with practice and help from Mayan teachers it is definitely possible. The majority of the volunteers living and working in Indigenous villages have been telling us that knowing the main greetings and words for expressing thank you really go a long way and help establish a mutual level of respect. Especially when using these to greet the mayor, teachers, or health and city officials that we work with. In addition they say it helps to use these for introductions in the villages during home visits and when giving health presentations and workshops with Mayan audiences. This helps build the confianza when using their native language and shows that you are trying to submerse more into their culture by learning to better communicate with them. I have learned a few words here and there in both Maam and Catchequel so it is fun to practice with my family now, they enjoy teaching the Gringa several new things about Guatemala. I love seeing the love and pride they carry for their Indigenous customs, their religion and for their country.
After returning, we all were not only exhausted but more anxious to figure out our sites, but we had to wait until Thursday thus this past week has been very busy with quite the work load. It has also been emotionally draining for we are nearing the end of training and had to give a presentation about all of the projects we have completed, workshops we have given, and all the work we have done throughout the entire training program. We gave this as a power point presentation on Thursday morning to both the Mayor of the town as well as the Technician at the Health Post in our community. We then had to turn in this presentation to our bosses for the Peace Corps to have copies of, too. Many future volunteers will most likely be coming to this same town for their 3 months of training, too, and thus will need to know where we left off so they can continue working on some of the projects we have started here.
In addition to this upon ending our training, we had to do a final project in our town on thursday. We decided to give a workshop for teachers about dynamic teaching and how to effectively use the experimential learning cycle. We invited several teachers from 3 different schools in our community and used dynamic examples to show various ways of teaching. We started off with a ´´dinamica´´ or an ice breaker activity and explained the importance of doing these in the beginning of a lesson or to break up sessions or classes after being seated for a while. This is especially important when working with children or with a group of new people who do not know each other.
We then demonstrated and introduced the experimential learning cycle which consists of an activity, reflection, generalization and application. We performed both a short skit and a puppet show for the activity to express a specific idea such as the importance of hand washing. Then the reflection part asks what happened to make sure everyone understood what happened and is on the same page. Generalization is asking why it is important and realizing what the key, take-home message. Application is asking them how they can apply this to their life. We then had them break into small groups and think of their own activity with an overall idea to share with the overall group by asking us questions and taking us through the cycle to make sure they can apply what we had just taught. At the end of the workshop we ended with snacks; in Guatemalan culture, it is important when hosting or putting on a workshop or charla to bring a snack for the participants, especially if it is longer than 30 minutes, and typically the snack is sweet bread and coffee or sweetened tea. We also handed out diplomas which the teachers can use for their resumes as a part of training. It was great to see that my host sister even came for she regularly gives charlas about human rights and from what I understand wants to be or is already a teacher. Afterwards she told me she enjoyed the workshop for it was very informative and creative, which is always nice to have positive feedback!
And finally what we all have been waiting for… the exciting news this week was all us volunteers in training finding out our sites! This is where we will be living and working the next two years; each Peace Corps Volunteer has a different and unique experience and it mainly has to do with where we are located, the people we work with and those we are living with and interact with on a daily basis. I found out that I am headed to Totonicapan! I am going to be living in the Aldea that I actually have already visited when a group of us went a few weeks ago during our Field Based Training to stay with current volunteer for a week. We traveled to this nearby surrounding smaller town (Aldea) and gave charlas about nutrition, the importance of dental hygine and made toothbrushes out of sticks and pieces of towels, did a team building activity at the local school and performed a skit about proper hygiene for food vendors at their town fair. I fell in the love with this Aldea when we first visited and I was wishing for a site like this so I am very excited that I got assigned to this particular site! It is settled up high in the mountains at an elevation of 9,000 feet with a total of only 719 habitants of which 100 % are Indigenous Quiches. Thus I will be learning the Ki´che´ Mayan language, however there are several who speak a decent amount of Spanish, as well.
This is an agricultural Aldea with the majority of crops being maiz (corn), apples and peaches as well as many farm animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats and horses.
I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to live in this Aldea, although in the surrounding towns there have been a few Peace Corps Volunteers who have helped worked in this Aldea for specific projects in the schools and giving presentations on various health projects. This Aldea´s greatest problems lie within malnutrition, respiratory and skin infections, diarrhea and trash. I am very excited to live and work here for my passions and background information are within nutrition, respiratory health and building plancha stoves for prevention, and trash/compost/recycling. Our program directors did a great job in matching our skills and knowledge with the sites they chose for us, and for this I am very excited to have this be my new home for the next two years.
This sunday we have to pack the majority of our things to take to our new sites which we will be visiting all next week and meeting our counterpart s and several of the people in the community and in the Health posts who we will be working with for our primary jobs. I will mainly be working with midwives, health promoters and women´s groups as far as giving Charlas about various health topics, HIV/ Aids workshops, and dynamic education workshops to these groups so they can continue to teach and promote health in the community.
We also have the liberty to do secondary projects such as nutrition and cooking classes, community and herb gardens, trash and environmental education, exercise classes, art and music activities and whatever else comes up in the community as far as what is needed or wanted. Each experience for the volunteer is unique because of these primary and secondary projects. Every town has its own character and its own needs, and as volunteers we co-plan and co-facilitate in doing community diagnostics in order to figure out what those specific needs are. Then we can work with various community members, such as the local health promoters, in order to help better the health of the community on several different levels in order to build sustainability among the town so they no longer will need our assistance. It is the strength of their own empowerment in the community to realize they have the resources to make the changes they want to see that are necessary to help improve their health.
During our first 3 months in site we will be conducting community diagnostics and anaylsis using several tools we learned during training. Three of these tools which will be very helpful are community mapping, daily activity schedules and a seasonal calendar. Community mapping can be used in various settings to locate current resources, activity centers, institutions, and other areas that are frequently used by groups who are developing the map. It can help provide differences in perspective, community needs, access to resources, and centers of decision making and power. Community mapping helps to create discussion among groups in order to figure out community needs, future activities and potential projects.
Daily activity schedules provide information on exactly what individuals of specific age groups and genders do throughout the day. This is useful when planning events, meetings, presentations and trainings, such as for local health promoters, to see what time of day works best for holding meetings, what type of labor-saving interventions may be possible and how changes may impact families.
And thirdly, seasonal calendars trace seasonal variations in labor activities, income flow and expenditure patterns. They may also include weather patterns, crops and animals production, animal and plant diseases, cyclical resource availability, human health patterns and social obligations and events. By learning how the seasons affect the economy and labor intensive activities of a community, all of these are important to take into account when working in a new town. It helps develop an overall idea to see how and why the community functions, what the most crucial needs are, and how you can best go about to start implementing changes in effective and creative ways. This cannot be done effectively without learning several aspects of the community and becoming integrated in the culture, events and activities. It is important to talk and work with as many as the different community groups as possible in order to try and figure out how you can best co-facilitate, co-plan and co -lead various ways to meet the greatest needs of the community.
After the first initial months of working on these community diagnostic and analysis tools with our counterparts and various community members, throughout the rest of the first year of our service we start to develop work plans in order to implement new health programs and start formulating ideas to meet the needs of the community. The majority is doing creative and participatory health education and figuring out community needs during the first year of our service, and this is done with health promoters, schools, women´s groups and other community members. We will be teaching about health topics such as nutrition, basic hygiene practices, and environmental issues through dynamic participatory activities to inform as many people as possible about making simple changes in their everyday lives that will start helping and improving their overall health.
In the second year of our service is when we start training promoters and community members how to build new stoves to better the health of the people and environment, latrines for those without bathrooms which helps to decrease the fecal-oral contamination cycle as well as cement floors and water systems to help decrease recurring illnesses such as diarrhea, skin infections and other gastrointestinal diseases. It is ideal to train local health promoters to build these sanitary structures in order to create sustainability within communities so they can continue to grow and build for the entire community and near by Aldeas who are also suffering from similar recurring issues. By helping them realize they have the power and resources to help themselves, they can start to develop into a community with improved health and decreased needs and thus will no longer need outside assistance in hope to transition into having less of the illnesses and recurring issues that we are currently seeing. It takes time, so this is why we are here living and working, helping to co-plan with the local community members to improve the health of the people living here.
At the end of a long week on Friday morning we had the opportunity to visit an amazing macadamia nut farm only two short bus rides away in a beautiful town called Duenas. The owner of the farm comes from San Fransisco, California who married a Guatemalan several years ago when shortly after opened up this beautiful, sustainable farm full of macadamia nut trees, various lush tropical plants, bright colored flowers, several compost piles from the shells and outer layers of the macadamia nuts. They have antique looking, handmade machinery for removing the shells from the macadamia nuts and then another to sort the nuts according to size. The paths throughout the farm are made of broken down shells and even the bathroom is made of bamboo stalk walls, thatch leaf roves full of beautiful flowers and a composted shell floor. I kept telling the friends and my Spanish teacher I was with how much I wanted to live in a place like this, and if anyone comes to visit me then I am definitely coming back for another visit! The best part was trying the macadamia nut pancakes drizzled in macadamia nut butter, flower honey, and fresh blueberry marmalade. We also shared fresh macadamia nut granola with freshly cut up papaya and pineapple again drizzled in the same delicious macadamia nut butter, honey and marmalade. We also got to sample dark and white chocolate covered macadamia nuts and had freshly brewed local Guatemalan coffee. It was quite a delectable morning!
We had a field trip for our technical training on Friday afternoon in Chimaltenango where we got to visit a place that makes improved wood burning stoves, latrines, water systems, and compost trash systems as well as a medicinal plant garden. We listened intently as we followed the Dona who lived at this environmentally conscience farm as walked through the herb garden taking pictures of all the different herbal plants that she and her many ancestors have been using for several generations to help cure and prevent several illnesses such as respiratory infections, menstrual cramps, cough, stomach aches and skin irritations.
I very much enjoyed our afternoon learning about several Mayan medicinal plants as we then transitioned over to her husband as he explained about appropriate technology in rural preventative health, which is what we will be working on in our second year of service in our sites. We started with learning about the latrines he builds, which are basically rural toilets. These ones are unique in that they are built with cement blocks with stairs leading up to the cement floor base along with a large tube for the toilet leading underneath the floor where all the deposits go. With this, dirt and ash (which happens to come from the stoves he builds) get added and mixed in to help compost what comes from the toilet. The dirt and ash also help to keep flies away and odors to a minimum, and at the bottom of this latrine at ground level there are two small doors that are used to remove the compost mixture on a regular basis which can then be used as a fertilizer for the garden. The latrine is enclosed by local materials depending on the area where you live, and these walls thus can be made out of wood, bamboo stalks, dried corn husks or cement and typically are then covered with a tile or laminate roof.
We then moved to the next section of this factory/farm to see the improved wood burning stoves which are made from either brick or cement block stacked together to form a rectangular cube, these are called plancha stoves. Before coming to Guatemala when I was living in Colorado, I had an internship at a local non-profit writing grants for these particular stoves to be built in similar rural communities in El Salvador, so it was really neat for me to see how these stoves are built in real life after spending nearly a year researching and writing about them . They have a chimney that penetrates through the roof in order to remove the smoke and prevent indoor air pollution, which is one of the greatest problems here in Guatemala and several other developing countries around the world. In Guatemala, respiratory infections and pulmonary diseases are the greatest cause of death for children under 5 years old for this reason, so we are going to be teaching and building new improved stoves for families in many of these rural areas and sites we will be living to help reduce these illnesses.
The water systems he builds are for controlling the water that comes from the pilas (water device they use to wash their clothes, dishes, brush teeth and wash hair). It gets filtered initially with a screen, then into a hole with a giant rock and a tube that gets channeled deep underground and the organic waste gets filtered out and put into the organic compost pile which then is later used for fertilizer as well for their herb garden and crops. I was so impressed with this cyclic set up, and I am very excited to implement what I have learned today at my site over the next 2 years, especially since trash and respiratory infections are two of the greatest problems this town faces.
I also wanted to add in a lot of the creencias, or superstitious beliefs, that my host family has been teaching me about here in Guatemalan culture. My family has some land where they grow bananas and when she brought a bunch to the table for breakfast there was one with two bananas within one peel. She did not want me to eat that one because here if a women were to eat it then it means if she were to get pregnant then she would have twins or even a baby with two heads. So she saved that one for our grandma who lives with us since she no longer is able to bear children. Another creencia is if you are to eat from two plates or with two forks at a single meal then it means that you will have two spouses in your lifetime. They laughed when I asked ´´you will have two husbands two at the same time?´´. And another one they told me was if a fruit tree one year does not bear any fruit then it will have to live in shame for that entire year by wearing a bright red pair of bloomers (Granny underwear) covering the top of it. Then the next year it supposedly will bear a rather bountiful amount of fruit after living a year in shame and embarassement, or here they call it verguenza. There are a lot of creencias here and some Guatemalans take them more seriously than others, but my family likes to share them with me typically during meal times. I always enjoy our daily conversations because you never know what story will be told or what you will learn.
We have our 4th of July party with all the volunteers currently serving in Guatemala this weekend and then we are off for a week to visit our future sites! During this week is when we meet several community members, move the majority of our belongings into the houses we will be living in for the first three months (this can be either temporary or permanent depending on each site), and even conduct a few house visits to see what the condition of the people´s living situations are. It will be an interesting week for we then return to our current host families for one last final week here in our training sites. That week we have our initial Mayan language training, give our goodbyes to our host families, swear in at our inauguration ceremony with the embassador and then we are off to our sites for the next two years! I cannot believe it is here, for I remember a year ago I just got nominated after my interview and was only told that I would be going to Latin America to do public health education. I had no idea what I was in store for, and now I am about to begin what I have been planning to do for over a year now…
Well yet again this has become quite the novel, and as always I would love to hear your comments, questions and in general how things are going in your life! Hope all is well 😊
Until next time, Alyssa
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Mom
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Moving on
Happy 4th to you and your new friends. Congratulations on your assignment--we are so glad you are excited about it--we know you will contribute so much, and you will gain so much. Love you! Mom